Greg Thomas: Can Injustice Catalyze a Hero's Journey?
How My View Grew · Amiel Handelsman
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Show Notes
In this episode of How My View Grew, Greg Thomas describes how jazz saved him from hating so-called "white people" and how he learned to see the Black American experience as a hero's journey that is central to American history and culture.
**Key takeaways**
- 3:00 Early-life learning about rabid southern racists
- 9:00 "I gotta pick up an instrument"
- 13:30 The pathologizing of Black Americans by "white" liberals
- 16:00 The depth and wisdom of Albert Murray, Ralph Ellison, and Stanley Crouch
- 19:00 "This history has got my back" and the artificiality of "whiteness"
- 22:00 The hero's journey
- 23:30 Amiel's reflections
**Resources**
- Jazz Leadership Project
- Omni-American Future Project
- "King of Cats," Henry Louis Gates Jr's long profile of Murray in The New Yorker
- The Omni-Americans: Some Alternatives to the Folklore of White Supremacy by Albert Murray
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